By chance, world leaders and I are in Geneva today, on peace missions of different sorts. I don’t envy them theirs, but I’m relieved they’ve found their way to it. And events of the past two weeks spur reflection on the ways in which his big mission and my little one intersect.

I arrived in Switzerland feeling quite concerned about potential US military strikes against Syria and their uncertain consequences, but it was inner peacemaking that brought me here this time: an irresistible invitation to jump in and help a group of dear Swiss friends put on a three-day program with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a Tibetan meditation master of the Bön tradition. I’ve long and much appreciated Rinpoche through his writings and webcasts, but hadn’t had the chance to see him in person until now.

One of the perks of hosting such an event (in addition to the karma cookies) is the opportunity to spend a little time in the company of an inspiring human — an educator who lives what he teaches, who embodies peace and kindness while he works to spread them.

Naturally, Rinpoche, too, was concerned about Syria, as we quickly learned. A Swiss TV team had picked him up from the airport in order to have a bit of time with him before filming an interview at the place where we awaited him, the home of two of my friends who were part of the team organizing the event. Not long after he walked in the door and greeted us with hugs, we got to talking. Rinpoche, who now lives in the US when not traveling internationally to teach, asked if I thought the US would strike.

It was looking likely. President Obama, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace merely for a campaign promise to abandon the mad cowboy aggression of the Dubya years, was poised to nab a second award for contortionism, adopting the unilateral warrior’s stance while attempting to project a compassionate face. Just last Tuesday, responding to increasing public opposition, Obama said, “when with modest effort we can stop children from being gassed to death… I believe we should act.”

A Deeper Look at the Libya Crisis

No one of sound mind wants children to die — of any cause, let alone such a truly horrible one as chemical weapons. So, clearly, action of some kind is called for. But a rational person must ask what kind of action seems most likely to achieve the desired result. Is it military intervention, intensified diplomatic pressure, or other nonviolent solutions?

More to the point: What historical precedent provides any confidence that a “modest effort” with bombs might be a dependable way to restore peace in the Middle East? If anything, don’t all of the Asian military campaigns of the past half century suggest the opposite? And if a “modest” bombing were to depose Syria’s Bashir al-Assad, who would fill the vacuum, and how would they behave toward those Syrians with whom they don’t feel aligned?

Another (most deserving) Nobel Peace laureate, Archibishop Desmond Tutu, put it plainly in an interview published in yesterday’s Financial Times: “You’re going to smash him [Assad] to smithereens, and what do you put in his place? Because that’s not going to solve the crisis in Syria, because you have all kinds of factions there, it’s better to try the long route…”

Tutu, as perhaps the world’s most authoritative living voice on national-scale conflict resolution, should be given our most attentive ear when he speaks on this complex and unpredictable issue. But let’s face it: At this point in human evolution, the “long route” is not our strong suit. As a species, we are capable of fantastic feats of creativity and perseverance under optimal conditions, but we tend to be less likely to rely on those gifts under stress.

In crisis mode, we tend to lose our patience, our finesse, and often our common sense. Why? These three days with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche would shed some light on this.

Over a polyglot lunch (languages spoken at the table included French, Italian, German, Spanish, Tibetan, Hindi, and English), gazing across a serene lake in Fribourg Canton, Rinpoche mentioned that recently he had watched a documentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis, a case study in the escalation of fear that very nearly led to a nuclear confrontation between the USA and the USSR. We observed parallels: increasingly strident political rhetoric, fearmongering in the media, and a conspicuous absence of serious multilateral diplomacy. Once the psychological machinery of war is set in motion, it is difficult to park.

A Deeper Look at Human Nature

After a siesta, we took Rinpoche to the venue, an art gallery in Bulle run by friends, where he was to deliver a public talk to kick off the first night of the program. But just as we rolled into the parking lot, Rinpoche announced he wanted take a quick walk, and asked if I’d like to join him. This was the sort of tête-à-tête I had quietly held hope for without any expectation, so I was delighted. As we hit the sidewalk, he joked, “I’m supposed to give a talk on the awakening mind, and what would help my mind awaken is a cup of coffee.”

The only place in Bulle I knew for a proper cuppa, a bistro called “le 43,” was just a block away, so off we went, briskly. “Une tasse de café, s’il vous plaît,” and the bartender set to pouring. I wanted to get the check but Rinpoche beat me to it, offering to treat me to a cup as well. But he had only euros, and I had only dollars, so we both drew our plastic, only to see the bartender shake his head apologetically.

Witnessing this, one of the patrons at the bar, suit-clad, fresh off work, turned to us and said with a hearty mountain smile, in richly textured, Swiss French-accented English, “Let me buy your coffee. Welcome to Bulle.” Rinpoche’s reply drew a laugh: “Now I feel like ordering dinner!” He and I were touched by this kind generosity toward strangers, and we spent the next ten minutes happily sipping espresso while he offered me tactful and helpful reflections on staying balanced and healthy while living a busy life (with the option of the occasional caffeine boost).

Returning to the gallery, Rinpoche paused briefly just before the threshold and switched gears with one breath. The jovial and soft-spoken friend we had spent the day with instantly transformed into a powerful orator, concisely delivering a stream of penetrating insight into the nature of consciousness and our human capacity to find connection and fulfillment within, and thereby interact with the world more effectively and more gracefully. In the course of this, he presented an overview of what his tradition refers to as the “nine winds” a taxonomy representing states of individual and collective consciousness, ordered from the most sublime to the most agitated. The ninth and last of these translates as “era-destroying wind,” which Rinpoche defines as the escalation of fear within a society (or group or relationship) to the point of self-destruction. [For more on era-destroying wind and the rest of the nine winds, see Rinpoche’s book, Awakening the Sacred Body.]

The truth of this is clear when we look honestly at our lives and our world. Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience research confirm what contemplatives of many traditions have known for centuries: tension (physical/mental/emotional) is the enemy of clear thinking, good choices, and effective action. As tension increases, the human mind becomes a progressively blunter instrument. Conversely, the more we connect with stillness (of body, mind, and spirit), the more the mind becomes supple and thinking becomes clearer and increasingly nuanced and creative.

In this light, we see the problem of escalation holistically. The threat of violence overheats us. Fearmongering in the public discourse polarizes us by making nuanced thinking more difficult — not only emotionally, but also on a physical, biological level. It squeezes all subtlety out of the room and leaves only crude options on the table. A limitless world of possibilities is reduced to primitive binaries: to hit or not to hit.

When pushed to the furthest extremes of fear, humans are ready to kill with no rational thought of the possible consequences. And when this happens on a societal scale, that is the “era-destroying wind” described by the sages — the very worst potential of our nature.

So, How to Get Back to the Best in Us?

There is a physical, biologically-driven necessity for us to cool off, to connect with the stillness that is always within us, as an aspect of our nature, so that we regain access to the serenity, sensitivity, and creativity that support to our best thinking, catalyze our most inspired solutions, and engender enough trust between people to give peaceful proposals a chance to succeed. We must first connect with the best in ourselves, and then open ourselves to connect with the best in one another.

“Peace begins within” might sound hackneyed or hippie, but this isn’t about some indulgent personal bliss. It’s a pragmatic prescription for safety, stability, and prosperity. And, when push comes well beyond shove, it is the key to our survival, as individuals and potentially as a species.

Try as we might (and must), we can’t pacify the entire world, of course, but we can pacify our own responses to tense situations. And if enough of us do that, then that changes the world.

For more on Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, including a free video archive of recorded talks, see ligmincha.org.

An Unlikely Path

How did an artist and activist fresh out of college wind up opening a vegetarian restaurant and community center just up the street from H.H. the Dalai Lama, and how did that funky little café in the Himalayan foothills spawn a charitable organization working for sustainable living and cross-cultural collaboration across the globe?

In 1994, I set out with a couple of friends on what was meant to be a year-long, round-the-world journey. We wanted to see who lives on planet earth, learn about what it means to be human, and try to make a difference along the way. Something happened halfway around the globe, however, that stopped us in our tracks: a ten-day discourse from the Dalai Lama on the Path of the Bodhisattva — the life of the engaged contemplative who dedicates herself to the altruistic intention to realize her full potential in order support others to do the same.

It was a life-changer. Everything we were looking for was here, we reasoned, so why go any further? We tore up our onward tickets and set ourselves on the cushion, and also started asking around about volunteer work. If we were going to be here for a while, how could we make ourselves useful?

No adequate caption for this experience…

One thing leads to another (even more fortuitously than average in Dharamshala) and, in the summer of 1995, I had the great blessing of my first private meeting with His Holiness, in which he very generously advised me on the vision that would become the Earthville Network and a full-time adventure for the next seventeen years (and counting) of my life, laying the groundwork for a global network of local initiatives for a more compassionate and sustainable world.

There was some context for this: In 1992, as a senior in college, I had spent a semester in Nepal, living with a materially poor (but joy-rich) family in their one-room mud house just below the Tibetan border. I was profoundly inspired by the extraordinary wisdom, resourcefulness, and kindness of the peoples of the Himalayas, yet also alarmed by the destructive impact of unplanned and unsustainable “development” in the region. Recognizing that change is inevitable but can be shaped to some degree for the better, and aspiring to help build bridges of understanding, appreciation, and altruistic collaboration across cultures, I began organizing a global community of kindred spirits committed to developing and promoting holistic and replicable solutions for compassionate living and sustainable development, starting locally and networking internationally.

A Café in the Clouds & a Vortex of Virtue

In 1997, my friends (Scarth Locke and Dara Ackerman) and I, in partnership with local collaborators, opened the doors of the first Earthville project, the Dharamshala Earthville Institute (DEVI) and KhanaNirvana Community Café, in McLeodGanj, the exile home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile. Providing jobs, training, and language education for recently arrived Tibetan refugees, we cooked up tasty, all-natural vegetarian cuisine from around the world and served it to a colorful international crowd of seekers. We channeled the modest proceeds into efforts (our own and others’) to develop educational and community building programs in Dharamshala, such as computer training for Tibetan refugees and vaccinations for local street dogs.

Documentary Night at KhanaNirvana/DEVI

At KhanaNirvana/DEVI, we held weekly talks from former Tibetan prisoners of consciences (many of whom had been imprisoned and tortured brutally for “crimes” such as saying the name of the Dalai Lama or having his photograph). We showed documentary films on Tibet, Buddhism, India, and other topics of regional or spiritual interest. And we had lively open mic nights with music and poetry of every description. And, in the midst of this, the best part happened: connections. KN/DEVI became a fertile nexus for fruitful meetings, recruiting new volunteers for local NGOs, matchmaking our diverse visitors’ gifts with the local students or agencies who could benefit from them, collecting blankets and medicines for our friends with leprosy, and endless streams of other good things.

DEVI was intended as a first step – a staging ground for launching other activities that would gradually flesh out the larger Earthville vision. This expansion happened quite naturally, as many altruistically oriented people from around the world who passed through Dharamshala made connections at DEVI, which naturally led to friendships that evolved into partnerships and projects.

One of the first such friends was Azriel Cohen (who recently passed away, in October 2012, and is pictured in the center of the photo at the top of this page, immediately to the right of the Dalai Lama). Azriel came from an orthodox Jewish background and had traveled far, both geographically and psychologically, to discover for himself why so many Jews had been drawn to India. At the trailhead of his journey, he read The Jew in the Lotus, Rodger Kamenetz’s fascinating and penetrating account of the first historic meetings between a delegation of Jewish leaders and the Dalai Lama (and, through that lens, the human search for deeper connection). Following that trail led Azriel to DEVI and to us, and we began organizing Jewish, Buddhist, Jewish-Buddhist, and Interfaith programs that eventually came full circle by bringing Rodger back to Dharamshala as a guest educator and facilitator in our passover program. This truly unique seder and month-long interfaith program was attended by several hundred people from every imaginable background, all coming together first in curiosity, then in compassion, and gradually in burgeoning love.

The Next Level: Dharmalaya

The newly-sprouting Dharmalaya campus

Fast-forward a decade. Having handed DEVI and KhanaNirvana over to our very capable Tibetan refugee staff, I moved two hours to the east to the village of Bir, a small and yet-unspoiled settlement of a few hundred Indian families and one of the earliest Tibetan refugee colonies in India. There, we receive a warm local welcome to establish the next step in the Earthville vision: a rural eco-campus for sustainable and compassionate living. With the generous support of Didi Contractor, one of the most preeminent vernacular architects in northern India, and an enthusiastic crew of local labourers keen to learn the dying arts of the traditional eco-building styles of the region, we set about creating the Dharmalaya Institute for Compassionate Living.

Before the first building of the Dharmalaya campus was even half-finished, we held our first “integration retreat,” a ten-day program organized in collaboration with our friends from SanghaSeva, which combined meditation in the mornings and evenings with mindful and joyful volunteer work in the afternoons. Participants made mud bricks with the locals, and then learned to build adobe walls. Organic gardening and permaculture landscaping were among the other “work meditations” on offer. The goal of these programs is threefold:

To provide a vehicle to help us take the warmth from the meditation cushion or the yoga mat and apply it in our work and social lives;

To create a model of immersive, contemplative ecotourism that allows visitors to break through the tourist bubble and have authentic and meaningful contact with the good peoples of the Himalayas; and

To establish a local green economy that creates fairly-compensated employment for low-income villagers and especially to create empowering opportunities for women of so-called “low caste.”

At the end of a happy work retreat

Since then, we’ve done two more similar retreat programs and the experiences of both the locals and the international participants in these programs have been life-changing in many cases. Considering that we haven’t even officially opened yet, we imagine this bodes well for the future.

Once the building is complete and the Dharmalaya Institute opens to the public, we will host a variety of service-learning programs in various aspects of sustainable and compassionate living, including classes, workshops, and retreats. We’re already running a weekly meditation group (seasonally). We hope to carry forward the magic of the interfaith programs that began in Dharamshala, and take them even deeper in a beautiful natural setting where our guests and volunteers can stay a while and find their own ways to plug into this dynamic mix of social and ecological learning and service in a contemplative environment.

Help Us Launch this Innovative Campus

Raising the Roof

In the last four years, we’ve launched a innovative NGO, raised around $80,000, created green jobs for dozens of Himalayan villagers, hosted over a hundred volunteers from India and over 25 other countries, completed about 90% of the beautiful new adobe-and-bamboo building that will serve as the HQ of our eco-campus, and changed a few lives along the way.

Once the doors of the Institute open to guests, the project will have a steady steam of income to sustain itself, but we need public support to make the last step to reach that point.

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A familiar sea of humans, cows, and three-wheeled auto-rickshaws… with some new features: People of all stripes gathering around giant outdoor projection screens to cheer every turn of the Indian athletes in the Commonwealth Games… Brand new Delhi Metro terminals, still not-quite-finished and already falling apart, teeming with hurried passengers, mostly unfazed as twelve more press themselves into the already-packed subway car… iPhone ringtones fill the air as police, no doubt instructed to put a new face on Delhi’s streets for the Games, remove beggars from their usual spots… Young women in uniform holding rifles very nearly their height peoplewatch like ghosts in the swarms of shoppers… A slice of New Delhi in 2010.

Tomorrow, the long, dusty road to Himachal Pradesh, a crumbling wagon trail of a thoroughfare with (very) slowly elongating patches of smooth black tarmac, always under construction (inconvenience regretted). It’s there that i’ll begin to feel strangely at home again, as the concrete monstrosities (“biggest and longest mall north of Delhi,” boasts one sign) gradually give way to what remains of the rustic beauty of the villages.

The purpose of the journey? A tiny effort to preserve a speck of that beauty in the face of all this “development,” and a humble aspiration to inspire and train interested villagers and visiting global citizens to do the same. Our budding sustainability project in the Himalayan foothills will take a big little step in the coming weeks: the stone foundations of our new baby, the Dharmalaya Institute, spent the last four months settling and curing in the monsoon rains, and soon we’ll start raising her lovely mud walls…

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Arriving in this ancient Anatolian city, once a fertile garden of cross-pollination among the great mystics and scholars, philosophers and poets from all over Eurasia, my warm-hearted tram driver, Mehmet, asked my views about Islam and Linux… I grinned. I had spent the whole night on a bus to reach this place of pilgrimage, the shrine of the great Sufi poet and teacher Jelaluddin Rumi, and my groggy mind had to do some quick yogalates to engage Mehmet the tram driver’s eager questions about cross-platform network administration. But i did so with relish. After all, what was Rumi’s legacy if not Open Source…?

And that’s par for the course lately: a lotta profound, a lotta mundane, and not a lot to distinguish one from the other (since, on close examination, each is full of the other).

Like this service ashram eco-campus thing, for example, and the new land… But wait, i get ahead of myself. Rewind…

Bodhgaya Boot Camp & a New Home in Bir

Sitting under the Bodhi Tree

This winter (which never actually happened as winter, as such: it was the warmest on record in India), we had the very good fortune to return to the Bodhi tree (in the Indian town of Bodhgaya, birthplace of Buddhism and world capital of burning plastic bags) for a two-month program of Buddhist philosophy and meditation given by the Karmapa (leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism) and Mingyur Rinpoche (one of the most gifted and scientifically-minded meditation teachers of Marg Trek: The Next Generation).

By dint of this intensive mindfulness boot camp, i have fresh awareness that the previous paragraph was in fact a single run-on sentence peppered with four parenthetical clauses… and i simply rest in that awareness, as it is… 🙂

The new front yard

Back home in Bir (and it’s a new home, BTW — i’ve been restoring an old house at the top of the village to serve as our new base, for now at least), i’ve continued the practice of doing at least two hours of meditation daily, and it makes a world of difference.

So, yes, i’m still charting my own Middle Way du jour, in search of my optimal hybrid of the life of the servant, the monk, and the artist that feels most appropriate for this chapter. And, as has been the case for the last three years, i’ve been leaning generally more monkwardly, still as devoted as ever to humble service, but wanting to continue tilting the balance toward the relaxed and contemplative…

And…

While the deepening of meditation practice keeps me smiling more than ever before, i’ve also been a busy little bee, collecting pollen for our blossoming Dharmalaya project. After a few months of wading through Indian legalese (and drafting 20+ pages of it), i’m happy to report that at last we have been signed, attested, notarized, certified, triple-stamped, submitted in duplicate, registered, and numbered Charitable Society #4305.

And i suppose the “big news” is that, at long last, we have land on which to build the ecovillage-ashram-school-thingy i’ve been dreaming of since i sat on my rock in Nepal in 1992.

Now, to say “we have land” is both to overstate and to understate things.

The overstatement: Though we have a signed agreement and we’ve put down a deposit, we still need about $5000 to complete the purchase, and there’s Byzantine paperwork ahead. So we “have land” in the sense that we’ve signed on the dotted line and we’ve started the first stage of pre-construction work: we’ve hired local laborers to start laying a motorable track (taking care not to disturb the trees) from the existing village road up to the bottom of the building site.

The understatement: The word “land” in “we have land” doesn’t really capture the gift that has presented itself in this glorious piece of Mama Earth. It’s a quiet, green, terraced hillside with a mesmerizing 300-degree view of the Kangra Valley, with snow peaks behind us. It’s pristine, with rich soil and full sun, and it’s breathtakingly beautiful. It’s ideal for the project in pretty much every way. Better than i’d ever hoped for, really, so i’m beyond delight.

So, what will we do on that beautiful piece of land? I’m thinking maybe a casino. What do you think? 😉

I’m excited to share juicy details, like the great good fun we’re having with our friend and co-conspirator Didi Contractor, a virtuosic and sagacious 79-year-old eco-architect who is volunteering her time and immense knowledge, skill, and heart not only to help us design and build our first green buildings, but also to guide us in developing a training program that will give local laborers a chance to learn the arts and sciences of neotraditional green building (i.e. indigenous earthen architecture plus earthquake retrofitting and other enhancements for safety and aesthetics) using the construction of our facilities as their OJT.

That plus other sustainability workshops (like high-yield organic farming and eco-friendly cottage industries) equals a humble, village-scale community college for green job skills — the direction we’re heading. There’s more on the Dharmalaya website…

The Near Future

Day trip to Tatooine

I have a few more days to explore Turkey, which i’m loving. (I started this email in Konya and i’m finishing it in a “cave hotel” in Ürgüp, an ancient oasis in otherworldly Cappadocia.) Next, i’ll hook up with family in Berlin and Denmark, then onward to Switzerland for time with dear friends and teachings from the Dalai Lama, followed by a few days of down time in Andalucía, then a couple of months in the US — mostly in Colorado, where Dara and i will continue our slow-grow cultivation of an album of her lovely songs, and finally a California visit in late October or early November before returning to India to start planting seeds (figuratively and literally) on the new land…

Or something like that. 🙂

Sending you all a warm glow from the cave…

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Thanks to the gracious hospitality of my Uncle Pat and Aunt Yong, recent transplants to Seoul, i had a precious opportunity to stop over in Korea for nearly a week on my way back to India (after a whirlwind maintenance visit to the US with some short but sweet family time). I knew very little about Korea before i arrived but, not being one to miss a good chance to discover a new corner of planet earth, i jumped.

For those of you who don’t know Korea but do know a Koreatown in a city near you, picture that Koreatown and then visualize it going on and on until it’s big enough for over ten million people. Then add an excellent subway and bus system, some impressive old temples, and enthusiastically helpful people, and you have an approximation of Seoul. Almost nobody speaks English, but they love charades, so getting around is fun with the right attitude. It’s apparently very safe, as well.

But, as pleasant as Seoul was by city standards, the greatest treasures of Korea lay in the old Buddhist temples of the south, in the region around Gyeongju. Built in the 7th and 8th centuries, these architectural wonders (many now protected as UNESCO World Heritage sites) are elegant reminders of an age when relaxing the mind was a top national priority. Don’t make ’em like they used to (neither temples nor nations, it would seem, and one could make a case about minds as well…).

A highlight: sweating my way up the sacred and picturesque postcardy mountain of Palgongsan to reach the ancient temple of Donghwasa, only to discover at the top that, well, Donghwasa isn’t there. Everyone had pointed me that way, no doubt because that’s the way i was already headed (i should’ve figured). But a very kind young local couple (an LG engineer and a college student) who were hiking on the mountain for a date (Koreans are SERIOUS about hiking) were kind enough to walk me all the way back down and over to the entrance of the temple, just ’cause they’re nice like that. The temple compound of Bulguksa was also a must-see, must-sit, and/or must-have-picture-taken-petting-golden-pig.

Our Own Private Truman Show

Back in Seoul, i had the privilege to visit a perhaps unlikely tourist destination. The US Army base is 4000+ acres of carefully reconstructed American suburbia, complete with a Starbucks, three schools, a golf course (virtually the only facility on base that doesn’t run a budget deficit), and its own fire station and health inspection department (to keep the Pizza Hut and Subway in line, of course), all sitting on prime real estate in the middle of Seoul with a very expensively secured perimeter. The US base in Seoul is a military Truman Show with the biggest Burger King indoor playground you’ve ever seen. If you pay taxes in the US, you might be pleased to know that, thanks to your $60+ million per year in infrastructural support funding, everyone on base is living comfortably despite the Army’s inefficient management. Possibly more comfortably than you, but who’s counting?

As a pragmatist who concedes the reality that, like it or not, the US will continue to have a massive worldwide military presence for the foreseeable future, and who believes it would be in everyone’s best interest for the US military budget (and global presence) to be scaled back considerably without giving active duty troops or veterans the short end, i have long wondered how best to pull that off responsibly. Always looking for the win-win, i was very pleased to learn (in some detail, thanks to my uncle’s expertise) that there are hundreds of millions of dollars that could be saved every year by taking the US military out of the business of building and managing entire universes. The military isn’t especially good at building and maintaining cities (and it shouldn’t have to be), and just imagine the unwieldy task of managing a global constellation of them. It’s a phenomenally expensive exercise in incompetence, waste, and diffused focus (to say nothing of the complex issues related to international perception of the proliferation of US military bases, which is another conversation).

Win-win solution: Keep the training facilities under the military domain, OK, but, as for all the support infrastructure, let others who are good at that stuff handle it. This is a case in which various private sector players (hopefully with an appropriately competitive bidding process) can do a much better job with those things on a much smaller budget, and the hundreds of millions in savings can be divided between, oh, let’s say, for starters, taking better care of veterans, advancing sustainable energy independence, and improving schools back at home. Is that not a win-win? There are task forces inside the military who know clearly that it is, there are good folks like my uncle advocating for it strongly, and there would be politicians on both sides of the aisle who would see the good sense of it. Unfortunately, so far it has been in nobody’s political interest to push it through the US Congress because (a) the general public is utterly without information on the issue, and (b) consequently, the only lobbying is from the special interests defending the status quo. Such downsizing of support infrastructure is clearly the smartest thing to do, and one of the best ways to save a LOT of money (in some cases half of peacetime expenditures if not more), but it isn’t popular, mostly because some folks would need to find new jobs and/or new golf courses… and, well, it’s “change.”

***

Dara the Plumber

Speaking of “change,” back home in Bir (that’s our new digs in the Indian Himalayas, in case you didn’t catch that last time), the kitchen sink stopped up for a spell while we were cooking for a dear friend visiting from Colorado. I fiddled with it for a minute to no avail but, a moment later, Dara emerged from pipeland victorious, with slimy fingers and her characteristic grin, announcing, “Dara the Plumber endorses Barack Obama!”

Just in case any of you in the US considered staying home for this one, i should mention that the whole world over here is counting on you to vote. For better or worse, US elections are bigger than the US. I’m meeting countless people from all over who have never tracked a US presidential election in detail before this one, but they sure are now, and i have yet to meet a single non-US citizen who’d prefer to see McCain in the Big Oval. And it’s fascinating to witness the myriad contortions of faces from different cultures when the name of his running mate is mentioned… To put it kindly, the USA has made herself a curiosity among nations.

Indeed, at this point, the damage to the US’s international image is so severe that even a hypothetical president of superhuman wisdom and power would not be able to restore her honor and integrity in a single four-year term. And, to be honest, i’m not convinced Obama can or will deliver much of the kind of change that i personally would like to see, and i’m particularly concerned that his foreign policy may prove still too aggressive to be in anyone’s best interest. But i do believe that in this election Obama is the best chance the US has to take at least a few important steps away from provincial gunslinger bravado abroad and wholesale swindling at home and toward bringing a modicum of humanity, decency, and integrity to a White House that has lacked those qualities for too long.

Of course, all things that change will change again, and things that change one way can turn again to the other, so the best we can do is get started and take it as far as we can, as wisely as we can, before the next inevitable reversal of the pendulum.

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Buongiorno from Venice, which i thought i’d better see before it sinks much further. Lately, it’s flooding more frequently and more severely, and it’s chilling to drift around this jewel of history and imagine that, within as few as 20 years (if some scientists’ predictions come true) the first floor or two of every building in Venezia could become aquaria. I’m imagining schools of tourists snorkeling around the ghost town like a shipwreck, gawking at the pesci dining in the bistros where once they were dined upon, while the tenaciously adaptable Venetians (the few who can still afford to live in ever-gentrifying Venice) get out their tools and move the old front doors up two flights of steps. 2028: the 3rd floor is the new 1st floor.

Saved by music & poetry

Yesterday in Vienna, after a tasty breakfast of organic beet salad and “veganer schnitzel,” i did part of my morning meditation in the Secession Museum, in the company of Gustav Klimt’s epic frieze in honor of Beethoven and the revolution of virtue Klimt saw in his chart-topping 9th symphony. Motivated by both compassion and the desire for personal gain, the most virtuous of humans wage ethical combat against the forces of darkness and decay, but in the end even the mightiest of men cannot stop it… not even the gods can defeat it… yet, in the final battle, a woman with a lyre plays the trump card of music and poetry, opening the door to the Ideal Kingdom. (Sister, could you play a little louder, please? We could use your help.)

Carnage, in its many forms

The exhibit upstairs was case in point: first, hundreds of the most gruesome photos of slain humans, murdered brutally; and then, further in, the same photos, but this time it’s seals, clubbed and hacked to death for their fur and meat. A few dozen mannequins march in protest, joined across time and space by a parade of Tibetans marching in photographic solidarity, while an elderly Balkan woman in a wheelchair holds a placard asking for change… in the person of Barack Obama. Surely no single person could be Klimt’s harpist for all humanity, but give me Obama and the lyre or, better yet, give me the Dalai Lama and ample time to cultivate the active love he exemplifies, and reflections like this every morning, to remind me why i’m here and keep that extra wind in my sails.

Back in the Himalayas

My bro Todd and i were set to join our pa-la for a trip to Tibet and Mongolia, from which we would’ve just now returned, had we not had to postpone the trip on account of the fact that the Chinese government (currently preoccupied with massacres of Tibetans), wouldn’t let us in — they closed the entire region of Tibet to foreign visitors. In the meantime, we’ve been facilitating discussion about the crackdowns at KN/DEVI, hosting nightly events packed with concerned global citizens, which, if nothing else, gives us all a chance to gather in a human response, and gives our Tibetan staff some small comfort. It’s hard to know if all the caring people in the world could change the course of the Beijing juggernaut, and honestly i’m skeptical, but… we do what we can, right?

Todd and the KN crew

While we were there, Todd inspired us to do some ambitious renovation. Fixing, sanding, painting, cleaning, and lots of good fun. We updated the menu with a few new dishes, too, and now KN is shining more brightly than she has in years (Thanks, Todd!). It’s a joy to see the place in full swing, and to see so many people enjoying it so much.

Having finished a several-month-long heroic push at KN, Dara has just begun another kind of adventure: a traditional three-month monsoon retreat at an international Buddhist women’s center just outside of Dharamshala. She’s all smiles to have some time to focus on the inner work. As am i! 🙂

An Auspicious Setback

And for those of you who have been asking for an update on our efforts to establish our new eco-campus for sustainable village development and service retreats, well, there’s much to tell. First, as you may know, we were offered land in the West Bengal hills (near Kalimpong, in the Darjeeling district). Well, what some generous humans giveth, some selfish humans taketh away: Starting late last fall, the whole region went up in political flames (not only figuratively) as a tiny minority of disgruntled and/or opportunistic Gurkhalis (ethnic Nepalis uprooted by generations of military service) revived a sometimes-violent (and always inconvenient) movement for an independent state. The stated rationale for Gurkhaland is sensible enough (Gurkhalis comprise the majority in the area, and the Bengal state government utterly neglects them, so let them rule themselves), but the methods of the movement tend to be both despotic and ineffectual (an unfortunate combination) and, because they’re as relentless as they are inept, the pain never ends. They keep the whole region locked down for weeks on end with forced shop closures, road closures, and heart closures. Very sad. And not particularly conducive to building a retreat center, by the way, especially when they expel all the “foreigners” now and again.

So, between the political chaos and the fact that we learned of a government plan to build a road right through the middle of the land we were offered, we put the Bengal project on hold indefinitely, packed our bags and headed back hOMe to Himachal Pradesh. And, as life goes, this is turning out to be much for the better, as it has given us the opportunity to stumble upon an even more appealing prospect in the tiny, quiet Himalayan town of Bir, just 2-3 hours east-southeast of Dharamshala by road. You’ve seen Bir if you’ve watched Khyentse Norbu’s excellent film, The Cup, which insightfully conveys some of the quirky idyll of Bir. And Khyentse Rinpoche’s Deer Park Institute is a mighty magnet for world-class teachers of Indian wisdom traditions.

In short, we’re still on the road to build the Dharmalaya Institute, but now 1000 or so miles to the west and a fruitful year or two later. A delightful little team of angels has converged around the cause, and we’ve been looking at several pieces of land. We’ll keep looking a bit more in the fall, and around that time we imagine we’ll nab a piece and start slowly building this mud-brick-and-bamboo paradise. What will actually happen is of course anyone’s guess, but we’re pointing our prow in that direction. For inquiring minds, there’s more about the vision on the Dharmalaya website.

Meanwhile, i’m off to Geneva tomorrow to reconnect with our dear Swiss friends to explore the creation of an Earthville chapter in the land of yodels and strudels so we can build long, high bridges between the Alps and the Himalayas.

Sending love to all points on the compass…

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Happy to be hOMe again. Conveniently, i feel that way almost anywhere i go… and yet there’s this familiar flavor of effortless contentment on some of my favorite patches of Asian soil. The static subsides…

Mozzies & the Matrix

Mahabodhi Stupa at Bodhgaya

Last month in Bodhgaya (where the Buddha formerly known as Prince Siddhartha, having spurned his 9-to-5, sat beneath the Bodhi tree posing for tourist paintings, many of which are still available today), i was fortunate enough to attend the 25th annual Nonviolent Mosquito Eviction Festival*, where i nearly mastered the gentle kung-fu technique; after a slow start, through diligent practice, i eventually succeeded in liberating well over 400 skeeters from the confines of my room without harm, and by the end i had accomplished the level of “Two Mosquitos in One Glass and Third in Hollow Fist,” which i’m told is pretty good for a rookie.

Mingyur Rinpoche, a rising star of the exile-born lamas (and now my main meditation teacher), offered very helpful elaborations on the practice, and also gave the transmission of the ancient, ear-whispered commentaries on the Matrix (“When Neo sees the electricity and stops the bullets, that’s a very good description of arriving at the first Bhumi“). And as if that weren’t auspicious enough, there were also 10,000+ monks, nuns, and laypeople making prayers for world peace and offering free medical treatments to thousands of impoverished Indian villagers, so the mozzies and i weren’t the only beneficiaries… 😉

[*CLARIFICATION — Since a few of you expressed confusion about how to discern the border between truth and humor in the story above, allow me to shed some light: There’s no such thing as a “mosquito eviction festival” — the Kagyu Monlam is a somber and inspiring traditional Buddhist gathering for world peace, which merely happens to take place in a land that is blessed with multitudes of mozzies on a mission to teach us compassion and forbearance — but the part about nonviolently removing over 400 of them from my hotel room is completely true. “It’s all in the wrist.” And, yes, Mingyur Rinpoche did refer to that scene from the Matrix in his explanation of what it’s like to begin to see reality as it is but, no, he didn’t actually comment on the mosquito kung-fu practice — nor would he have, since it’s double top secret! 😉 ]

On Noses, Ears, & Hearts

Here in Thailand, we have a brand new prime minister who is peeved at Thailand’s deaf population because of they name by which they refer to him in sign language. They make a fist over their faces, recreating his generous nose, which some have likened to a rose apple. Apparently, he doesn’t feel that this is a respectful way to address a prime minister, but the deaf community has responded that they’ve been calling him “Big Nose” since the ’90s, when he helmed the brutal crackdown against peaceful democracy and human rights activists, and it would be too confusing to Thailand’s deaf to change their language now.

I can sympathize, in a way, having lost all hearing in my right ear quite suddenly just over a year ago. After spending five years building what had grown to become a deeply rewarding career of music production, losing half my hearing (and thus the ability to mix in stereo) was a stunner for my little mind on several levels: physically, because the brain uses stereophonic hearing to place the body in space, to place the sounds we hear (e.g. car horns, sirens, shouting people) to evaluate whether we’re in danger or need to take quick action; emotionally, because so much of my life inspiration had been invested in musical gardening, some of the fruits of which were almost ripe to be shared; and practically, because the SF Bay Area is one of the most expensive places in the world to live and suddenly i found myself without income and without a key body function that had become (half) the foundation of my income. Naturally, i visited many holistic healing heroes (from whom i learned a lot) and even stooped to allopathy (trans-tympanic corticosteriod injection and other joys), but all the king’s horses couldn’t repair the nerve that no longer carries signals from right eardrum to brain.

My old friends at Tao Garden (holistic healing center here in Thailand) didn’t have any new input on the ear, but they did manage to get my platelets flowing freely. The clumpiness of my blood (which i wrote about a couple of years ago — “too much sticky”) may have been part of issue with the tissue. (Blood too thick + capillaries too thin = traffic jam; that’s one theory.) They took about 300ml of blood out, infused it with ozone (which made it maraschino red!), and let it drip back in. Now the dark field microscope shows all my blood cells have lots of elbow room. Not likely to bring the hearing back in my right ear, but perhaps it’ll help me keep it in the left (i.e. if there’s any truth to my neurotologists’ theory that my hearing loss may have been due, at least in part, to a vascular issue, such as poor circulation due to thick blood not circulating properly through narrow capillaries).

Otherwise, the only thing that’s happened so far that has brought any noticeable change in my hearing is, interestingly enough, trekking up and down the paddies in the Himalayas, on and around the spot of land near Kaimpong that we were offered for our retreat center. On the first day we visited the land, i was surprised that, on maybe five occasions, i distinctly heard my own voice in my right ear as i was talking, for just a fraction of a second. The same happened once or twice since then. So far, it happens only during physical exertion, so i intend to exert all the more.

Meanwhile, though — and perhaps until the nanobots can go in there and bionicize my nerve, i’m profoundly enjoying the many blessings of sudden single-sided sensorineural deafness (with the bonus of tinnitus and other strange stuff in my right ear). The gift of deeper compassion for others who suffer invisible-yet-challenging impairments. The creative challenges of learning to mix in mono. The wonders of watching the brain and body-mind grow new pathways, finding new ways to take care of bizniss. The quiet joy of simply noticing the resilience and tenacity of my quiet joy. My happy camper cup overfloweth now more than ever before. This effortless happiness in a time of challenging change could be read as an unsolicited endorsement of Buddha in ’08 [campaign slogan: “Regime change begins at OM”], but maybe it’s just a statistical fluke, a dimpledchad on both cheeks…

Speaking of OM, tomorrow we fly to Delhi and make our way up to Dharamshala, for a reunion with KhanaNirvana, Maynerd Doggie, and the Ocean of Wisdom. For 10 days, HH the Dalai Lama will share with us his incomparable insight into living a life of loving kindness and skillful action to benefit others. I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to listen to his teachings again and then have a little time to retreat and reflect on them. Feeling humble and inspired as i prepare to spin a new cocoon…

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We plant trees. We come back later. Some have died, some are still standing… and some have spawned magical forests!

After five years away from my old hOMe of Dharamshala (a small but densely bustling town in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, which serves as the exile home for H.H. the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile), and hearing how much it had been overbuilt since i left in 2001, i had long felt a bit apprehensive about returning (sad to watch a flower wilt). But when i got word that HH would be teaching for a week on the Path of the Bodhisattva (revisiting the topic of the first teaching of his that i had ever attended, back in ’95 — the one that inspired Scarth and me to abort our round-the-world journey midway and stay here, to study and serve), that was all i needed to hear. Two long days of uniquely Indian travel later, i checked into one of the very last rooms available in the teeming town, just seconds before the monsoon clouds dumped an ocean on the streets, driving everyone but the cows indoors.

The deluge died down by dinner, and a five-minute walk (climb) later, i was ordering a “Tao of Pao” and a hot apple cider at KhanaNirvana and catching up with our old friend Samdup. It was a quietly magical homecoming.

Samdup is a Tibetan refugee in his early 30s, a former medical student in Tibet, whom we hired as a waiter in around ’98. He worked his way up to the management and we eventually turned the place over to him to run as his own, with the understanding that he would also continue some of the service programs of the Dharamshala Earthville Institute (DEVI), which we had based at KN and which, for me, were KN’s raison d’etre. As i walked up the three flights of steps to our café in the clouds, i was intensely curious about what i’d find behind the teal doors…

When i reached the entrance, there was Samdup, chatting with a customer from behind the BuddhaBar (our juice and smoothie bar that serves as a sort of cockpit for the KN mothership). He hadn’t checked his email, so my arrival caught him by surprise, and the way his busybody face blossomed into smile was precious. It struck me immediately that, while he and i always got on well, this felt like the happiest we’d ever been to see each other.

He joined me at my favorite corner booth while i tucked into my tofu, and told me that the years had taught him a new respect and appreciation for what is special about KN/DEVI and the value of what had been our unorthodox approach to running it. And, looking around, i could see what he meant: he has been stewarding the KN/DEVI vision like the devoted curator of a living exhibit, taking pride in the works he inherited, and rearranging a few things but mostly going out of his way to keep KN true to its origins. Healthy hanging plants, four coats of paint to try to match our elusive grape-chocolate shade on the walls, and a trip to Delhi to buy more of the same simple yet elegant black crockery. He continues our tradition of using only natural ingredients, even when he could’ve lowered his costs by using inferior stuff. Still the best burrito in Asia, and still under a buck and a half. Ali Farka Toure, Nina Simone, Buena Vista Social Club, and the Neville Brothers still rock the stereo, along with some well-chosen new stuff, and the vibe remains alive.

But what gave me the greatest joy was seeing the way our baby is still serving the community under Samdup’s care. DEVI’s “Sunday@Sunset” speaker series still brings former Tibetan prisoners of conscience to tell their stories every week, with Samdup translating into English and delivering the pitch for volunteer support at the end, to a standing-room-only audience. Documentaries on Tibet and other relevant topics air every Thursday (followed, surreally, by the World Cup). And the weekly open mic and jam nights still pack the house with the most eclectic mix of music and poetry one could ever hope to find in one place (see Pico Iyer’s colorful description), and though performers vary as much as the elevation in the Himalayas outside, the crowd is still warm and enthusiastically supportive of everyone.

I had a bit of slightly naughty fun: sitting incognito with the other guests, watching their lights come on, and hearing what they had to say. “This is exactly what i need right now,” said one smiling traveler as she and a few friends took their seats on the cushions next to me, fresh in from HH’s teachings. Scarth and Dara, you’ll be pleased to know that i heard regulars describing various menu items to newcomers as “divine,” “to die for,” “best one in India,” “as good as it gets in samsara,” and the like. I was tickled to overhear that i’m not the only one who regards KN’s Ferderferburger as a fully realized mahasiddha in the realm of veggie burgers. 😉 (If i sound like i’m bragging about the successes of my precocious child, please forgive me: i’m just bubbling over with the joy of witnessing that something we put so much work into has not only survived but is still being enjoyed richly, years later.)

When several different people, not knowing i had cofounded the place, described KN to me as a kind of magical connection hub where one inexplicably has just the right experiences at just the right time, all i could do was smile… 🙂

Indeed, though of course some things have changed, there is still magic at KhanaNirvana. From where i sit today, what surprises me the most is how surprised i am — why am i surprised to see that the place amazes and inspires as much as it does? We and our many angelic friends put a lot of heart into creating something special for those who come, and Samdup and his new crew are doing the same, so of course people will feel the love.

Even during the years when we slept (too briefly) on the floor every night and woke up to work another relentless all-day shift, i always felt the fruits of this labor of love were worth every moment… so imagine my joy when i saw so much of that beauty still shining and all there was for me to do was breathe and enjoy it… 🙂

~~~

Speaking of return on investment, i also had the great joy of catching up with some of my former students and seeing they’re doing great things. One is now producing DVDs of the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Dharamshala and around India. The other has started a full-service computer service center and has compiled a 200-page computer education textbook, and he proudly told me that, in the spirit of my volunteering to teach him and help him start his computer classes, he is paying it forward by donating hundreds of copies to refugee training centers around India. He has also trained countless teachers, who have gone on to train others… and, for refugees, that training can make the difference between being able to support their families or not. I was happy to see his success and especially his kindness to others. It was also instructive to see how the humble seeds Dave and Don and i planted a decade ago have grown into a forest of opportunities that have empowered hundreds of refugees to support themselves, their families and communities, and their culture. I wouldn’t have expected the ripple effects of our small projects to extend and expand the way they have, and it’s encouraging to see how such small efforts can lead to greater results when the causes and conditions come together.

Likewise, i was elated to learn that many of KN’s alumni have gone on to manifest dreams of their own, and some of them are also paying it forward by serving others. Tashi still teaches English everywhere he goes — as a volunteer, with no motivation other than to serve. Lobsang is running a magazine. Jampa now runs a nonprofit community center and teaches yoga. Others are also teaching or pursuing higher studies.

I never doubted the value of dedicating most of a decade of my life to volunteer service (it felt deeply right, so i never spent much time questioning it), but now, seeing how our humble work has inspired others to pay it forward, it’s a choice that feels even better. I also feel such gratitude for all the myriad forms of support we received (at just the right time, again and again) from countless local and global friends. My heartfelt thanks to you all…

~~~

I banged out a couple of tunes on someone’s “Givson” guitar at KN’s open mic night and was amused to discover later that i had been spotted by a recruiter. Samdup’s friend Shodar, a talented young Amdowa impresario, told me he was putting on a show at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) and he wanted me to be the opening act. He also wasn’t ashamed to mention that he wanted an inji face on the poster to draw a bigger crowd. Well, he wasn’t joking: even though i only played two songs in the two-hour event, my face took up about 1/3rd of the poster… i was embarassed, but it didn’t seem to scare anyone away, as the hall was sold out to about 2000 exceptionally enthusiastic refugees from Amdo (the northeast region of Tibet) and a few of their neighbors from the other provinces. It might’ve been gratifying that they cheered wildly for my songs, except for the impression that it probably didn’t matter at all what i did — they were all so easily pleased. But i had a great time, bad sound notwithstanding, and i felt some personal satisfaction playing one of the first songs to be born in my old “cave” at Samadhi House, just a few steps up the road from TIPA, in the forest, over a decade ago. The rest of the night was a motley variety show of traditional Tibetan folk songs and dances (great!), Shodar and his friends doing hip-hop dancing (precious!), and a few singers doing the heartfelt karaoke thing that somehow enjoys the status of legitimate stage performance in much of Asia.

~~~

Ah, there’s more that could be said: deeply transformational retreat time, meetings with dear friends old and new, another offer of land for an Earthville campus (25 hilltop acres of monastery land in Sikkim this time), and other adventures, but my time online is about to expire, so i’ll wrap it up for now.

The bottom line is that, after my retreating and advancing, i feel great — on balance, probably better than ever, and in a way that feels a little more more stable by virtue of being a little less dependent on what’s happening around and inside me…. Let’s see how that holds up back in the Land of the Free-for-a-Fee… 🙂

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Sawadee khap from Doi Saket, where i’m planted once again in the Tao Garden, polishing my inner smile. 🙂

Yesterday was the first slow, leisurely day i’ve had since i left India two months ago… and now, after a whistle-stop tour of my world in Oakland (mostly my desk, truth be told), i’m finally catching up on missed breaths, and feeling grateful to be exactly where i am.

(In a heartbeat, it’s suddenly raining buckets here.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A week ago, in a jetlagged layover dream, i sat on the shore in Kowloon (notably more graffitti’d under Chinese administration), watching the clouds blow by in the mirrored windows of the feelgood Hong Kong skyscrapers, then took the subway into veggie paradise. Dinner in Bangkok a few hours later… why can’t i do this every day? 🙂

Like life, but somehow denser, Bangkok is always a mixed bag, but the mix keeps getting sweeter as i navigate more knowingly. This time was extra-special though, since the whole city threw a double birthday party for the Buddha and me. I wondered how we should celebrate, and he suggested we hit the streets early and find some folks who could use a little love. The first person i invited to our heart party was a 50-something leper propped up against the Skytrain stairwell. I bought him a few meals, but i got the impression that the smiles were even more nourishing to him, by the way he lit up. Likewise for all the other partygoers i recruited across the city. May those candles stay alight…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Spent most of the last week within a few blocks of my beloved Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. Yes, the sequel! We’ve returned for another round of recording and filming, and oh am i glad we did!

The reunion with our Vietnamese musical-kung fu family was very sweet — and somehow even warmer than before. No committees, no toasts, just love and music. Felt like coming home to family. We recorded in a well-appointed home studio run by a new friend, Ho Hoai Anh, who is a very popular musician in his own right but, like his elder Khanh, is very down-to-earth and can’t be bothered with protocol. Hoai Anh was a godsend as a second engineer, helping to keep us all in sync with graceful technical and cultural translation. The result is a solid hour of good performances, cleanly captured, and i can’t wait to get home and mix them.

My only regret is that everything went so deliciously smoothly that i have no fodder for drama to keep y’all cliffhung this time, so i guess your entertainment will have to come from the two CDs we’ll be releasing in September. 🙂

On the inner plane, the big news in Hanoi was my reunion with Hoan Kiem Lake. Saw familiar faces there — others who, like me, seem drawn to her, sit facing her, in silence. The old folks, doing what matters most. Young lovers, in pairs and alone, longing. The tai-chi ladies with their fans and swords. The kung-fu dudes whacking their wrists and forearms against the poles to toughen themselves up, and eyeballing the growth of each other’s muscles. A woman in her 60s, with a condition that renders her helpless as an infant, being held by her husband or brother, who every day brings her to the lake, lovingly feeds her on the bench, then takes her walking Butoh-slowly around the water.

I don’t know how to explain, except to say that, somehow, the spirit of that lake is one of my best friends in this world. Doing my morning chi kung with her, strolling around her, or just sitting by her banks, i feel more like me. Kinda wish i could take her home in a bottle, but she definitely lives in my heart.

Meanwhile, here at Tao Garden, there’s nowhere to go but in and nothing to do but bloom. Returning after several intense months, i’m awestruck by the dramatic non-impact of peace… My arrival here was a meteor hitting the ocean with no splash… just a gentle rippling, a rustle in the leaves, and i’m here, floating…

I notice that when i’m so deeply peaceful i don’t need to eat much. The food here is divine, but i feel so nourished by everything else around me that my (famously enormous) appetite for gourmet Asian vegan grub is quickly satisfied, despite the fact that i’m quite physically active. This is in sharp contrast with my life in the city, where i’m often moving only my eyes and fingers (and the hard drive in my head) yet feeling ravenous, insatiable.

Looking deeper into these contrasts, while my perspective is fresh, i am humbled in recognition of the undeniable power of place. I could be doing the same thing with the same attitude and intention in a dozen different places and have a dozen utterly different experiences. Just being in a city makes me hungry, even when by all appearances i’m not doing much… but in the light of contrast here i see the truth is i am doing a lot when i’m in the city, just being there: my system is being bombarded with myriad stimuli, and of course it’s going to react, and those reactions burn energy. But, as Marshall McLuhan aptly put it, “whoever it was discovered water, you can be sure it wasn’t a fish.” We become desensitized to what is all around us, to the point where even some of the biggest influences on us can become invisible.

It seems i’m getting a tiny bit better at it. Though i certainly didn’t arrive at Tao Garden this time in the same great shape i was in when i left it last October, i clearly did arrive here in much better shape than when i arrived last time. That’s something.

But, inevitably, i have to ask: why leave? I’m feeling more motivated than ever to build community in nature. It just works.

Yo ho ho, a village life for me.

Everyone please go outside. 🙂

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Speaking of the village life, a week from now i will transplant my retreat from the manicured majesty of Tao Garden to the fertile terraced slopes of Sikkim. I’ll be in India till mid-July, doing a combination of creative and meditative retreating and project-related advancing, starting with the former and ramping up to the latter. At some point (dates still in the air), i’ll be heading back to the land in the West Bengal Hills to meet with Ani Sonam La, her family, and our South African friends to take the next steps on our project there.

For the last week of May and most of June, i’ll be very, very far from the Internet (yes, there are still a few places it doesn’t reach), so if you don’t hear from me again till July (which is likely), well, no news is very, very good news for this flower who blooms in stillness.

Juicy love from the mango forest…

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After the intensity of our inner and outer experiences of recent weeks, my friend Artyom and i were ready for a holiday. We hired a jeep to Sikkim, had good talks and good momos, and then he caught a jeep eastward to Rumtek Monastery (the exile HQ of the previous Karmapa, though the Indian government still won’t allow the current incarnation to take his seat there, or even visit, for fear that China would be none too pleased) and i caught a series of local share jeeps northwest to Ravangla, one of several towns in a breathtaking cluster of centuries-old mountaintop settlements worthy of the mythic moniker of “Shangri-la.”

After a magical, nearly dead-silent day of rest and reflection in a cabin on a hill above Ravangla, near Kewzing, i hitched a ride onward to Gyelzing with some grad students from Gangtok who were conducting a state-sponsored survey of all of Sikkim’s schools to assess their material needs so the state government can fulfill them. Just like that. This many pens, that many books, here ya go. (Wow. I thought India was supposed to be a “poor” country and the US was supposed to be a “rich” one, so why do so many of my teacher friends in Oakland have to buy their own chalk out of pocket?) The inquisitive students asked me, “What is the greatest problem facing America right now?” I answered right away, “George Bush,” which earned me a high five from Manu, the Poli Sci major in the passenger seat. (No offense intended to anyone who might feel aligned with him; i’m not a partisan, but i do place a higher value the lives of others and healthy international relations than this president has demonstrated, and i do view his actions as a grave threat to the peace and prosperity of the US and the world.) After giving it moment’s thought, though, i nominated another candidate: “selfishness.”

Speaking of Dubya, he just arrived in India for his first-ever visit to the subcontinent, in search of a face-saving way for the figureheads of both countries to gain domestic and international political capital by coming to an “agreement” about the nookyaler plans that India will pursue whether “the Decider” likes it or not. There were tens of thousands of Indians on hand in Delhi to protest the arrival of the man some referred to as “the world’s greatest terrorist,” and our beloved Arundhati Roy is all over the TV (even BBC World felt it necessary to cut her off repeatedly and change the subject when she made her case compellingly). Today, around 150,000 protested in Delhi, and i’ve been overhearing people criticizing Mr. Bush high and low in West Bengal and Sikkim as well. A dose of comic relief came today , however, when i read in the Kolkata paper that officials from the US Library of Congress attempted to buy some of the protesters’ signs and T-shirts for documentary purposes…

The talk of Dubya and selfishness led to a conversation about the role of educational institutions in preserving, creating, and shaping culture. I thought of the inspiring two-hour talk i heard the Dalai Lama give in Sarnath just a couple of weeks ago, addressing Tibetan and Indian academics, in which he called for a radical revision of the traditional monastic curriculum. It’s not enough to study the traditional Tibetan Buddhist canon, said the envelope-pushing reformer: monastic students must familiarize themselves with the entire body of Buddhist literature, from the Pali and Sanskrit texts to the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, and other iterations… and, due to the irreversibly globalizing nature of the world of today, monks and nuns must also study at least the basics of the various spiritual traditions of the world as well as western philosophy, the natural sciences, computers, environmental issues, and social activism… and the monasteries, nunneries, and other Tibetan educational institutions must reinvent themselves to serve these updated objectives. If only the rest of the world’s spiritual leaders felt the same way… (Disclaimer: My Tibetan is rather shoddy, so i hope i’m conveying his message accurately enough. I did ask around to double-check, so i’m fairly confident in what i’ve written here, but in case of any errors, i apologize.)

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Interconnectedness vignette: I spent Losar (Tibetan New Year) afternoon at Pemayangtse Gompa (trans: Sublime Lotus Monastery), an 18th-century marvel of otherworldly art and architecture near the remote village of Pelling in West Sikkim. Most of the monks were knackered from two solid days of tantric cham dancing in heavy, hot, god-monster costumes, but when i leapt to help one still-effervescent lama move a butter-lamp table, i discovered he teaches about Buddhism in my alma mater’s Nepal program, which (unbeknownst to me until this moment) had transplanted itself from Nepal proper to Kalimpong a few years back when the so-called “Maoist” violence in Nepal escalated to a civil war. But the world wasn’t quite small enough yet. Standing behind me when i asked this lama how to find Zangdok Pelri, Guru Rinpoche‘s Copper-Colored Paradise, was a friendly South African computer programmer (the first Western face i’d seen in a couple of days) who, it turns out, used to take classes at the DrumCafé in Cape Town, which was founded by relatives of brother Guy Lieberman, who was the person through whom i originally met Leigh, who introduced us to Ani Sonam La… and he knew Guy’s uncle Steve Barnett, who had joined us for one of our programs in Dharamshala. Yep, that’s our global village. 🙂

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And so ends this visit to India. Whatever may come of the possibilities that have emerged, i’m immensely grateful for my time here. So many reminders of simple wisdom too easily forgotten when life speeds up… and some new learning that i can already feel doing its thing in me… opening, softening, humbling, strengthening, forging, inspiring…